Banxrobber aims to capture mortgage refinancing

Mortgagenet principal Kieran Trass has branched out into the mortgage
refinancing segment of the market with the attention-grabbing brand name
Banxrobber.

Thursday, August 2nd 2001, 3:44PM

by Jenny Ruth

While the
Reserve Bank will only let properly certified organisations use
the word "bank" in their names, it has approved his
use of Banxrobber.
Trass' new business is based on a website of the same name which
uses a 1930 's bank robbing and safe cracking theme, a theme which
will be repeated in marketing.

Initially that will be on Auckland taxis
and radio station Classic Hits from this weekend and in cinemas
from November. "I could've called it ABC Mortgages and no
one would care. We think Banxrobber's got the potential to become
a household name," Trass says.

"To make ourselves loud, we had to
go for a name that was powerful, that captures what we do and
makes people curious," he says.

Trass reckons the mortgage refinancing market
has been neglected. It isn't small. He estimates about 65,000
mortgages or about 15% of New Zealand's total mortgage book are
refinanced every years.

How Banxrobber works is that potential clients
screen themselves using a calculator on the website to find out
whether the eight mortgage brokers so far signed up to provide
the service can save them money by refinancing their loans. The
eight brokers are based in Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton
and several in Auckland.

Trass says he may expand the service's reach
but wants to stick to major population centres, at least for now.
It aims to help in two ways: by providing a cheaper interest rate
but the borrower continues to pay the mortgage off as if the rate
was higher.

Trass says that currently, while 7.7% is
the standard floating mortgage rate offered in the market at present,
Banxrobber can offer 7.3%. By maintaining repayments as if the
rate was 7.7%, borrowers can save $30,000 over a 20 year mortgage,
he says.

Banxrobber can access 20 different bank
and non-bank lenders as well as lending directly through an Australia-based
wholesale lender. Trass says he' s contractually bound not to
name the wholesaler but can say it has more than $A5 billion in
assets under management and has a "AAA" Standard &
Poor's credit rating.

All mortgages will be processed through
the processing business, Mortgage Processing Ltd, which Trass started
earlier this year to take care of the
administrative side of establishing mortgages such as credit and
information checks, valuations and liaison with the mortgage lender.

The Banxrobber service is free to potential
customers with the only requirement being that they provide their
email addresses to add to Trass'
database. He stresses that he doesn't sell his email list to third
parties but uses it for sending out his newsletters. Mortgagenet
currently has 3,200 newsletter subscribers, he says.

Trass is the first to admit that Banxrobber
can't help everyone. But if it can't help you, it may still entertain.
One part of the site is devoted to
"bizarre robber stories."